If you go to any store or website that sells books, you will find a number of books by one of the best-selling “Christian” authors of our time. Among some of the things that you will read in these books are the following quotations. Although some of you may be familiar with these books and/or the author, I am not going to mention either the titles of the books or the author, because my purpose this morning is not to disparage this person, but rather take an objective look at some of his teaching.
To live your best life now, you must start looking at life through eyes of faith, seeing yourself rising to new levels. See your business taking off. See your marriage restored. See your family prospering. See your dreams coming to pass. You must conceive it and believe it is possible if you ever hope to experience it. [Your Best Life Now, p.4]
But if you develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you. [Your Best Life Now, p. 5]
He’s a progressive God, and He wants every generation to be increasing in happiness, success, and significance. No matter where we are in life, God has more in store. [Become a Better You, p. 3]
These excerpts are representative of an increasingly popular theology that is referred to by several different names like “prosperity gospel”, “name it and claim it”, “word of faith”, or “health and wealth”. As part of a 2006 article titled “Does God Want You to be Rich?”, Time Magazine conducted a poll that revealed that 17% of those who identify themselves as Christians belong to such movements. In addition 31% agreed that if a person gives their money to God, God will bless you with more money and 61% believed that God wants people to be prosperous.
In that article, Time chronicled the story of a 49 year old man named George Adams who moved his family to be near one of these churches after he lost his job in an Ohio tile factory. His words give us some good insight into those who have subscribed to this theology.
“I’m dreaming big--because all of heaven is dreaming big," Adams continues. "Jesus died for our sins. That was the best gift God could give us," he says. "But we have something else. Because I want to follow Jesus and do what he ordained, God wants to support us. It’s [Joel Osteen’s] ministry that told me. Why would an awesome and mighty God want anything less for his children?"
Obviously Adams, or any other proponents of such thinking, didn’t read the words that we’re about to read from the book of Ecclesiastes. Or if they did read them, they certainly didn’t take them to heart.
13 Consider the work of God; For who can make straight what He has made crooked? 14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, But in the day of adversity consider: Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, So that man can find out nothing that will come after him. 15 I have seen everything in my days of vanity: There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, And there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness. 16 Do not be overly righteous, Nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Do not be overly wicked, Nor be foolish: Why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you grasp this, And also not remove your hand from the other; For he who fears God will escape them all. 19 Wisdom strengthens the wise More than ten rulers of the city. 20 For there is not a just man on earth who does good And does not sin. 21 Also do not take to heart everything people say, Lest you hear your servant cursing you. 22 For many times, also, your own heart has known That even you have cursed others. 23 All this I have proved by wisdom. I said, "I will be wise"; But it was far from me. 24 As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, Who can find it out? 25 I applied my heart to know, To search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things, To know the wickedness of folly, Even of foolishness and madness. 26 And I find more bitter than death The woman whose heart is snares and nets, Whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, But the sinner shall be trapped by her. 27 " Here is what I have found," says the Preacher, "Adding one thing to the other to find out the reason, 28 Which my soul still seeks but I cannot find: One man among a thousand I have found, But a woman among all these I have not found. 29 Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes."
Ecclesiastes 7:13-29 (NKJV)
MAIN PRINCIPLE
Once again, this is a passage that at first glance seems to contain a number of random, unrelated thoughts. But this entire passage is held together by the main principle, or what we might refer to as the “box art”, which is actually found in the middle of this passage in verse 18:
It is good that you grasp this, And also not remove your hand from the other; For he who fears God will escape them all.
True wisdom comes from fearing God (v. 18)
This is the truth that we must take from this passage. And not surprisingly, it is the core principle that is missing from every single one of these groups and people that are proclaiming this prosperity gospel.
This is such an important principle that our entire passage this morning revolves around this truth. Qoheleth uses this entire passage to describe…
WHY TRUE WISDOM CONSISTS IN FEARING GOD
1. God is sovereign (vv. 13-15)
The main reason why true wisdom consists in fearing God is that God is sovereign, a principle that weaves itself throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes. This is such a critical idea for us to understand that Qoheleth keeps giving us different pictures of God’s sovereignty, almost as if he is hoping that at least one of these examples will get through to his readers. Here’s how he describes the sovereignty of God in this passage:
13 Consider the work of God; For who can make straight what He has made crooked? 14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, But in the day of adversity consider: Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, So that man can find out nothing that will come after him. 15 I have seen everything in my days of vanity: There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, And there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness.
Qoheleth invites his readers to consider the work of God as evidence of God’s sovereignty. There is nothing that man can do to straighten out that which God has determined will be crooked, returning to a thought from earlier in the book:
What is crooked cannot be made straight…
Ecclesiastes 1:15 (NKJV)
He then goes on to point out that man, in spite of his efforts, cannot determine the days of prosperity and the days of adversity. Those are totally and completely in the realm of God’s control. Even that which does not make sense to us in our limited human minds – the just man who perishes and the wicked man who lives a long life – is determined by God without any human influence.
Job reinforces this principle with these words which he spoke in response to Mrs. Job’s exhortation for him to curse God and die.
He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
Job 2:10 (NIV)
If there was ever a book that demonstrates the sovereignty of God, it is the book of Job. We are given a peek into what is going on behind the scenes in the unseen world of God. And it could not be more clear that God is the one in charge. Nothing occurs unless He determines it. Even Satan can do nothing without God’s permission.
Since we’ve already covered this principle several times previously in our journey through Ecclesiastes, I won’t elaborate any more except to observe that God’s sovereignty leads us directly into the second principle:
2. We can’t manipulate God for our own profit (vv. 16-17)
Verses 16 and 17 comprise another one of those passages in Ecclesiastes that often seems to be taken out of context and therefore used improperly. Let’s read those two verses once again.
16 Do not be overly righteous, Nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Do not be overly wicked, Nor be foolish: Why should you die before your time?
I’m amazed at how many Bible commentators have concluded that Qoheleth here is describing what is known in philosophy as the “golden mean.” That is a philosophy, promoted particularly by Aristotle, that there is a desirable middle that exists between two extremes – excess on one hand and deficiency on the other. Although we can find evidence of such a philosophy in the Bible, this is not one of those places.
We must keep in mind that these two verses are connected with the previous verses, which we have already seen make it clear that we cannot control or manipulate our own lives by our behavior because God is sovereign. So when Qoheleth writes that we are not to be overly righteous or overly wise, he is not advocating that we avoid righteousness or wisdom, but only that we avoid the pursuit of both of them as a means of trying to gain some kind of advantage over God and force His hand for our own benefit or profit.
When Qoheleth writes that we are not to be overly righteous, he is clearly referring here to the kind of pious self-righteousness that is intended to gain some kind of favor with God or to get God to give us something that we want.
Jesus addressed this very same issue in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 6, he introduced that topic with these words:
Be careful not to do your ’acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
Matthew 6:1 (NIV)
He then went on to describe how many of the people of his day performed religious acts in public because they thought that they could somehow benefit personally from their self-righteousness. But in their giving to the poor, their prayers and their fasting, Jesus described them as hypocrites who had already received their total reward.
Remember the words of George Adams that I quoted earlier:
Because I want to follow Jesus and do what he ordained, God wants to support us.
That seems to be exactly what Qoheleth is warning against here. Just because we follow Jesus and do what He ordains is no guarantee that God is going to give us something that we want or desire or that we will personally benefit from righteousness that is motivated by our own self-interest rather than by the fear of God.
The same thing is true when it comes to wisdom. The kind of wisdom that Qoheleth writes about here is the kind of wisdom that is focused on trying to figure out God so that we can somehow manipulate Him into providing us with what we want. But as we have consistently seen in the Book of Ecclesiastes, it is impossible to figure out God by what we can observe here on this earth. And even the Bible doesn’t reveal everything about God. Because God is God, there will always be a degree of mystery about who He is and how He operates. In fact, I am confident in saying that if your theology isn’t large enough to handle mystery and paradox, then it’s probably not based on the God of the Bible.
But even though I cannot manipulate God through my own pious self-righteousness and my own wisdom, it is certainly not true that I want to avoid those two virtues. In fact, as Qoheleth makes quite clear, if I go to the opposite extremes of wickedness and foolishness, I can actually cause harm to myself and even die before my time.
So this is clearly not a matter of pursuing the golden mean and trying to live somewhere between righteousness and wickedness or between wisdom and foolishness. Righteousness and wisdom that are pursued out of a fear of God do have a benefit in our lives. Qoheleth has consistently pointed out the benefit of a righteous life and the pursuit of wisdom throughout Ecclesiastes. But the value of those pursuits cannot be measured by the balance in our checkbooks, the success of our marriages, or whether our big dreams are coming to pass.
3. Our wisdom is limited by our sin nature (vv. 19-29)
We won’t have time this morning to look in great detail at this entire section, but that’s okay because Qoheleth sums it up very nicely for us in the two verses which serve as bookends for this part of our passage:
20 For there is not a just man on earth who does good And does not sin.
29Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes."
Although some of this section can be a bit confusing, if we keep in mind the beginning and ending verses which provide us with the overall theme, we will be much less likely to go off on a tangent or to draw wrong conclusions.
The point that Qoheleth is making here is unmistakable. Man will never be able to figure out God because of our sin nature. Once again, as we have already seen several times in Ecclesiastes, the words from this book take us back to the Garden. That is especially true of verse 29.
When God created Adam and Eve, they were without sin and they had perfect fellowship with God. But when they decided that wasn’t enough, they pursued their own scheme in order to try and be like God and to pursue, on their own terms, wisdom.
"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:5, 6 (NIV)
Satan knew exactly where to try and attack Adam and Eve. He promised that if they would just eat the fruit they could become like God, knowing all. And we see that one of Eve’s primary motives for taking the fruit was to gain wisdom. But that sin separated them from their perfect fellowship with God. And ever since that time man has been trying to figure out God and His ways, often to no avail because they are limited by their sin nature.
In the midst of this section, we run across a couple of verses that don’t make a whole lot of sense on first glance. The first one is found in verse 26:
26 And I find more bitter than death The woman whose heart is snares and nets, Whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, But the sinner shall be trapped by her.
Qoheleth’s readers would have understood what he was writing here, but we need a little more background so that we can make sense of it.
First, we find that this is a specific woman to which the author is referring – it is “the woman”. In the book of Proverbs, the author consistently personifies wisdom and folly with two women – the virtuous woman who is a picture of wisdom and the adulteress woman who personifies folly. The woman he refers to here is obviously folly. And it is quite clear that the person who fails to fear God and to please Him is easily ensnared by that folly.
The second thing that we must understand is that the “sinner” that is described at the end of the verse who is trapped by folly is a person who chooses to sin as a lifestyle, not the person who fears God, but who occasionally slips back into sin.
So here’s the bottom line. The person who fails to fear God is consistently subject to being ensnared by folly and so that person will never find wisdom. On the other hand, though there is certainly a great advantage to fearing God and having the opportunity to lives wisely, even that wisdom will never be sufficient to completely understand God or to manipulate Him for our own self gain. Our sin nature will always be a limit to our wisdom.
There is one last part of this passage that we need to deal with.
27 " Here is what I have found," says the Preacher, "Adding one thing to the other to find out the reason, 28 Which my soul still seeks but I cannot find: One man among a thousand I have found, But a woman among all these I have not found.
For those of you women whose husbands attend the Tuesday morning Bible study, I want to share a disclaimer right off the bat. In spite of my attempts to steer our discussion in a different direction, all of those men were anxious to go home and use this passage to prove that men are more righteous than women. So if they did that, it’s not my fault.
But seriously, Qoheleth is not a woman hater. And in spite of the fact that the culture of his time clearly didn’t place a high value on women, he is not saying that men are more righteous than women. In fact, all he is doing is reinforcing the fact that there is no one on earth that does good and that all people – men and women - have chosen schemes which cause them to no longer be upright before God.
Clearly the number one thousand is used figuratively rather than literally here. It refers to a large number of people. And based on the context, here is what Qoheleth seems to be saying here. “Among all the men I’ve observed, I’d be lucky to find even one that appears to be righteous. And what are the chances that a woman, who doesn’t even have all the advantages of a man in this culture being righteous.” He is just using some hyperbole here to reinforce the fact that no one is righteous.
Once again this is some good and useful information, but what do we do with it? How do we apply it to our lives? How do I make sure that I live wisely by fearing God? Obviously I can’t give you a comprehensive list of how to do that, but l think there are a few simple tests that we can apply to our lives that will give…
EVIDENCE THAT I FEAR GOD
1. I transform my life to God, not try to transform God to my life
As followers of Jesus, our job is not to critique God’s Word, but rather for our lives to be critiqued by it. We cannot take the Bible and try to mold it to our culture and to the way that we want to live our lives. Instead we must take the Bible and use it as a guide to mold our lives to match up with God’s purposes, plans and ways.
Paul’s familiar words remind us of this truth:
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2 (NIV)
The only way that we can do that is to be saturated in the Word of God. That’s how we renew our minds so that we can conform our lives to God rather than expecting God to conform to us.
2. I live life for God’s glory, not for my own benefit
This principle is demonstrated throughout Scripture, but perhaps no more clearly than with Paul’s thorn in the flesh.
And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me - to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
2 Corinthians 12:7-9 (NASB)
Paul obviously would have liked to have the thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, taken away for his own benefit and comfort. But in order to keep Paul from exalting himself, God chose not to remove it and to instead let Paul know that God’s grace was sufficient and that God would be glorified in Paul’s weakness.
One of the great problems with the prosperity gospel is that their theology implies that God can only be glorified when we somehow benefit personally. They view financial prosperity as evidence of God’s work in their lives. But one of the dangers is that as soon as they lose their job, or have their house foreclosed on, or they get really sick or a child dies, they blame God and rob Him of the ability to be glorified through difficulty and pain, as well as prosperity and comfort.
I’m reminded here of the words of Job after he lost everything:
…The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
Job 1:21 (NIV)
God can certainly get glory in our prosperity, but He can also receive glory even when we lose everything.
3. I continue to follow God, even when it doesn’t make sense
In many ways this is the essence of the entire Book of Ecclesiastes. Because God is in heaven, and we are here on earth, as Qoheleth wrote earlier in the book, we are incapable of understanding all the ways that God works. We can only understand as much as He has chosen to reveal to us, primarily through His Word.
Job certainly came to that realization when He finally listened to God rather than to his so called “friends”:
Then Job replied to the LORD: "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ’Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. "You said, ’Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
Job 42:1-6 (NIV)
Job recognized that it was foolish to try and figure out God, or to manipulate Him for his own benefit. But as a result of continuing to follow after God, even when he had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, Job came to know God better. Instead of just hearing about some generic God, Job now had a personal relationship with the Lord of the universe. That was far more valuable than all the material blessings that Job received after that.
Righteousness and wisdom are good. God desires that we live righteous lives before Him and that we choose wisdom over folly. But those two virtues are never to be used to try and manipulate God into provide us with wealth and health. In spite of what some would lead us to believe, there is no magic formula or no plan that can guarantee that we will be rich and enjoy a long life here on this earth.
But for those who fear God and who live according to His purposes, plans and ways, it is possible to enjoy a rewarding, fulfilling and abundant life, not just here in this brief, vaporous life “under the sun”, but for all eternity. That is the true measure of prosperity.
